[Previous entry: "Sudan is a Foothold on the Continent"] [Next entry: "World trade deal hailed as 'historic', but pressure groups fear a 'catastrophe"]
08/02/2004:
"The Curse of Wealth Under the Ground"
by Jim Schultz zmag.orgCochabamba, Bolivia - When Bolivians went to the polls earlier this month to vote on how to develop the nation's vast oil and gas reserves, they went with history on their minds.
Just outside the old colonial city of Potosi sits the mountain known as "cerro rico" (hill of riches). Beginning in the mid-1500s silver extracted from the hill, mostly by forced Indian labor, virtually bankrolled the Spanish empire for three centuries. Today Bolivians remember very well that their country sat atop one of the planet's greatest treasures of mineral wealth yet ended up the poorest country in South America.
Last October, as President Gonzalo Sānchez de Lozada pressed ahead with plans to export the nation's gas through Chile and onward to the US, the country erupted into a month-long series of road blockades and protests. When the President sent out troops to quash the demonstrations, leaving more than sixty people dead, a surge of public anger forced him to flee to the US in exile.
As Bolivia's Vice President, Carlos Mesa, stood before a special session of Congress to be sworn in as the nation's leader he pledged a commitment to one of the protest's key demands - to put the gas issue before the people directly, through the nation's first-ever public referendum. full article
